The category was fictional elephants: Horton the Elephant discovers Whoville in a children’s book by which author?

As obscure as that category may sound, this trivia question had an easy answer. 

Dr. Seuss.

“I do know that fictional elephant,” asserted a calm Janet Robinson, a retired elementary school teacher who was playing team trivia at the Red Horse Tavern in Pleasant Gap on one of its weekly trivia nights. 

Robinson motioned for the team’s answer sheet and wrote down Dr. Seuss on the line. “I could quote that one for you,” she says of the book Horton Hears a Who.

Team trivia nights at local establishments like the Red Horse offer friendly, fun competition for those looking for a weeknight out. 

I joined Robinson, her husband, Tim, and their friend George Jerko to check out the trivia night scene at the Red Horse on a recent Tuesday night. The Robinsons, who live in Bellefonte, have been participating in trivia nights for nearly 10 years at pubs in Bellefonte and State College. This was my first team trivia event, and I hoped that my specialty in geography would come in handy so that I could say I contributed.

The Red Horse hosts its contest in the bar, which is a cozy space. The quizmaster is Ellie Porter, and she reads off the questions from the TV screen in a corner of the bar. The contest has five rounds of ten questions each, and teams can choose to double their points in one round. They just have to mark their score sheets before the round begins. A one-question final round determines the night’s winner. 

This night started off with two rounds of general trivia knowledge. Here’s one question: U.S. News reported for the sixth year in a row that this is the best diet on its list of best and worst diets. 

This group knew the answer, the Mediterranean diet. Tim Robinson wrote the answer and was asked if he spelled Mediterranean correctly. “This isn’t a spelling contest,” he shot back.

Another question asked the score by which the Cincinnati Bengals beat the Buffalo Bills in a snowstorm during the NFL’s recent AFC playoffs. I knew that one. I watched the Bills and quarterback Josh Allen look like the bungling Bengals I knew growing up as a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. I got the score: 27-10.

Porter, the quizmaster, takes her role very seriously. She told a guy at the bar that he had to leave his phone behind when he headed to the restroom. He seemed surprised at the caution. 

She said she heard him asking questions about that Bills-Bengals game, and she didn’t want anyone to cheat. When he acceded, she announced, “Everyone, his phone is here. He’s not cheating.” Whew.

The third round brought us the fictional elephants. The team did OK—we got a question about pink elephants in the Disney movie Dumbo and one about Babar. We missed one about the elephant Bing Bong in the Pixar film Inside Out. 

Another question in the category asked the teams to identify the elephant Bart Simpson won in a radio contest in the show The Simpsons. This group didn’t know. Janet Robinson wasn’t bothered by it: “Some people are Simpsonsfans and would know the answer.”

The fourth round was an audio round of clips of songs featuring choirs. Teams had to name the song and the original artist or band. Getting both correct was worth two points, though teams could get one point if they knew either the song title or the artist/band. 

The first one was an easy one, I thought: “Like a Prayer” by Madonna. Two points.

Jerko quickly wrote down the answer for a heavy metal song I didn’t know. I wasn’t feeling very helpful until later that round. I knew the song “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield (it was the theme song of a show on MTV). Another two points.

I knew the name of the song “We Are the World” but not the band (U.S. Aid to Africa), and I had one of those moments where a song you haven’t heard in thirty years comes back to you, sort of. I knew the artist, Enigma, but couldn’t name the song “Sadeness (Part 1)” from 1990. It felt like it was on the tip of my tongue. We got one point on those questions.

We braced for the final round: Words that end in “action.”

Subtraction, putrefaction, retraction, refraction, and redaction were among the answers. We debated refraction vs. diffraction for the answer to a question about the way the light was bending on the cover of a Pink Floyd album. Tim Robinson was quick to write down diffraction, but his wife, Janet, thought the answer was something simpler, refraction. (Which it was.)

Going into the final round, there were two teams tied with eighty-seven points, and our team was at eighty-six. If only I could have remembered that song was by U.S. Aid for Africa we’d be in first place, too.

In the final round, there was one question, and teams could wager up to 20 points. The quizmaster announced each team’s point total so they could strategize how much to wager when she revealed the category, which was bodies of water. Finally, a geography question. I encouraged the team to wager the max.

The question wasn’t tricky: Name the two continents separated by the Drake Passage.

I knew the Drake Passage was a cold body of water. Was it near the Arctic? No, that didn’t seem right. Then it came to me—that’s the narrow passage between Antarctica and the southern tip of Chile in South America. 

I was right, but so, too, were the top teams, which also wagered 20 points. We ended up in third place, while the two tied for first moved on to a sudden-death round of one question that involved one of the teams running their answer sheet to the quizmaster because the first to answer correctly would win. (I admit I did not make note of that question because I was feeling dismayed by our third-place finish.) The question asked for the year that someone said something. It seemed really obscure. Neither team got the answer (which was the year 1871), and the winner was the team whose guess was closest to that year.

Moving on to Big Spring

I had heard Big Spring Spirits’ trivia night was popular, so I thought I would see that one next. I didn’t want to commit to playing, though, after I saw the number of teams. Erin Holmes, assistant manager of the distillery in Bellefonte, told me they might have as many as seventy-five people playing trivia there each Thursday night.

Big Spring’s trivia night was a little different from that of the Red Horse. Celesta Powell, who also works at the distillery, says the employees take turns coming up with questions each week. The night I was there, the theme of the questions was wine and spirits—very fitting for a distillery.

I caught up with a team of regulars: Karen Peggs, Stephanie Haldeman, Lisa Ford, and Liz Stone. The four women have known each other for more than twenty years, since their children went to Marion-Walker Elementary School in the Bellefonte area. Their kids are now young adults, and the mothers—instead of seeing one another at school functions—have been playing trivia every Thursday night at Big Spring for the past three years. Stone says it was probably her idea, and the rest of the women agree it was more than likely her doing.

They have their specialties: Peggs knows music from the 1960s to the ’80s. Haldeman has geography. Ford says she’s the one who nails the obscure questions. 

“If I get one or two a week, I’ve earned my seat,” Ford says.

The women are competitive, and they win. Stone pulled out of her pocket three Big Spring gift cards that were prizes in previous weeks.

They text each week to make sure everyone is going to play. Barring someone’s vacation or Big Spring being closed, trivia night is a guarantee. “If they’re open and we’re here, we’re doing it,” Peggs says.

At Big Spring that night, I noticed a member of the winning team from the Red Horse trivia night from the week before. He is Tom Wilson, a former mayor of Bellefonte.

I used to report on Bellefonte Borough when I was a newspaper reporter, and I knew Wilson from covering the meetings. He told me he is on a committee to bring a band stage to the borough’s Talleyrand Park, and he introduced me to his teammates, Hugh Roberts, Carolyn Lee, and Mark Threeton. (Maybe that’s a question for a local trivia round.)

He said he organizes several trivia teams. I mentioned the close game the week before, and he was quick to downplay the win.

“Every blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while,” he said. T&G

Sometimes the trivia answers are wrong

Tony Ghaffari has a weekly trivia night at Your Cigar Den in downtown State College.

He says he started it on Mondays from 7 to 9 p.m. as a way to bring in people on a typically slow night. It’s worked, as they have ten to sixteen people playing each week.

In the early days, Ghaffari would find questions on the internet. Someone would read them over the loudspeaker. Nowadays, his setup is way more advanced. A friend of his created a software program that shows the game on a screen—the teams, their scores, the categories, and the questions.

He purchased questions and now has 27,000 at his disposal. Sometimes, though, a player challenges a question, and the hosts will have to look up the answer to be sure.

“Everybody that’s there is pretty smart,” he says of his crowd, which includes Penn State professors and post-docs. “When they challenge a question, they’re usually right.”

Trivia tips from local players

• Choose team members with different areas of expertise.

• Find someone who knows music. Music is always a category.

• Go with your gut. There will be times you or your teammates second guess yourselves. You might be sure about an answer, but something makes you doubt yourself. Go with your first instinct. It’ll save you time, because trivia night is fast-moving.

• Find a place that suits your team. Some places devote their entire space to trivia, while in others it goes on in the background. Some places read the questions out loud, while others display them on screens.

• Have fun!

Mike Dawson is a freelance writer who lives in College Township.